A Change of Climate

Ralph and Anna Eldred live in the big Red House in Norfolk, raising their four children and devoting their lives to charity. But the constant flood of 'good souls and sad cases' welcomed into their home hides the growing crises in their own family. From the violent townships of South Africa to the windswept countryside of Norfolk, this is an epic yet subtle family saga about what happens when trust is broken...

A Place of Greater Safety

A tour-de-force of historical imagination, this is the story of three young men at the dawn of the French Revolution. Georges-Jacques Danton: zealous, energetic, debt-ridden. Maximilien Robespierre: small, diligent, and terrified of violence. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming, handsome, but erratic and untrustworthy. As these key figures of the French Revolution taste the addictive delights of power, they must also come to face the horror that follows.

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, and the streets are not a woman's territory; so she becomes confined in her flat. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank - waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

Vacant Possession

From the double Man Booker Prize-winner, a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved Every Day is Mother's Day. Muriel Axon is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney and Isabel Field. It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced and vengeance to be wreaked.

Every Day Is Mother's Day

Evelyn and Muriel Axon, mother and daughter, lead a haunted existence. Objects of horror to their neighbours, they evade or terrorise any social worker who crosses their path. Inside their house, they pursue a covert persecution of each other, shrinking from the unseen occupants of their spare room. But change is in the air... Every Day is Mother's Day is a merciless comedy of colliding lives: of sex, death, madness, adultery and the social services.

Learning to Talk

This sharp, funny collection of stories begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In Third Floor Rising' she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity. With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

Mermaids Singing

Up until now the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different - this one’s on the loose. Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills, where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive.

S. Christie says:"Good ( if a little too gory) book but terrible narration"

Wolf Hall

Tudor England. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is charged with securing his divorce. Into this atmosphere of distrust comes Thomas Cromwell - a man as ruthlessly ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

The Nix

Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

Writing Down the Bones

Here is a new collector's edition of this modern classic as you have never heard it before, read by Natalie Goldberg herself, and then infused with her most personal reflections about this "magic manual" for all writers. Try these ingenious, Zen-based exercises to expand your writing skills ¿ or just for fun.

Birdcage Walk

It is1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him.

My Name Is Lucy Barton

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, read by Kimberly Farr. A mother comes to visit her daughter in hospital after having not seen her in many years.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao's ascent to the events leading to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. It is a history of revolutionary idealism, music and silence, in which three musicians - the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow; the violin prodigy, Zhuli; and the enigmatic pianist, Kai - struggle during China's relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to.

The Heart's Invisible Furies

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

Fludd

Fetherhoughton is a dreary town in 1950s northern England. Father Angwin has lost his faith. Sister Philomena strains against convent life. The inhabitants of the town go about their lives in a haze. Then a stranger appears, bringing with him the hint of something new. But who is Fludd? An angel come to shake the dwellers from their stupor, or is he the devil himself, a wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?

City of Friends

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or, at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings but instead long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby.

Swing Time

Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and true identity, how they shape us and how we can survive them. Moving from Northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time. Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe or makes a person truly free.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

A brilliant collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.Hilary Mantel is one of Britain's most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly subversive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, summoning forth the horrors so often concealed behind everyday façades.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. In other words, you contain multitudes. These microscopic companions sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth. In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems.

The Gustav Sonata

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland where the horrors of the Second World War seem distant. He adores his mother, but she treats him with bitter severity, disapproving especially of his intense friendship with Anton, the Jewish boy at school. A gifted pianist, Anton is tortured by stage fright; only in secret games with Gustav does his imagination thrive. But Gustav is taught that he must develop a hard shell, 'like a coconut', to protect the softness inside - just like the hard shell perfected by his country to protect its neutrality.

Madame Bovary

In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply felt and sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. However, her aspirations and her desires to escape only bring her further disappointment and eventually lead to unexpected, painful consequences. Flaubert's critical portrait of bourgeois provincial life remains as powerful as ever

The Invention of Wings

From the celebrated author of the international bes tseller The Secret Life of Bees comes an extraordinary novel about two exceptional women. Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimke is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift.

The Essex Serpent

London 1893: When Cora Seaborne and her son Francis reach Essex, rumours spread from further up the estuary that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist is enthralled, convinced that it may be a previously undiscovered species. As she sets out on its trail she meets William Ransome, Aldwinter's vicar.

Dissolution: Shardlake, Book 1

It is 1537, a time of revolution that sees the greatest changes in England since 1066. Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church. The country is waking up to savage new laws, rigged trials and the greatest network of informers ever seen. And under the orders of Thomas Cromwell, a team of commissioners is sent throughout the country to investigate the monasteries.

Publisher's Summary

Opening with "A Second Home", in which Mantel describes the death of her stepfather, Giving Up the Ghost is a wry, shocking, and beautifully written memoir of childhood, ghosts (real and metaphorical), illness, and family. Finally, at the memoir's conclusion, Mantel explains how a series of medical misunderstandings and neglect left her childless, and how the ghosts of the unborn have come to haunt her life as a writer.

An often painful listen as Hilary Mantel describes a life determined by her parents' separation and life with a stepfather and then by what can only be called medical negligence and bad practice, a state of affairs not uncommon in the 60s and 70s, channelling her into the superb writer she has become. Woven through is also the sense that the boundaries between worlds and people are not as solid for her as they are for most of us. Beautifully structured and written. Highly recommended.

One often reads about the suffering of a genius. While it is difficult to hear the story of Hilary Mantel's suffering, she is clearly a genius. Her childhood is beautifully and cleverly told and the narrator is particularly excellent at this. It was a lovely ending too. I've never read any of her novels but am a fan now and have already purchased Wolf Hall.

If you could sum up Giving Up the Ghost in three words, what would they be?

Darkly, personal humour.

What did you like best about this story?

Although the memoir describes loss of various kinds, there is not a gram of self-pity. Rather, there is a seam of dark humour throughout which narrator, Jane Wymark nailed impressively. I almost had the feeling that she must know Mantel very well.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

i enjoyed depictions of Mantel's young life and imaginings, such as her becoming a steed-mounted, sword-weilding knight. The writing is extremely skilful so that the prose seems to match the age being described. I don't mean to suggest that the writing describing the 9-yr-old Mantel had only the ability of a 9-yr-old's writing but rather the odd perceptions and conflations of life's experiences and motivations which characterise the young.

Loved this book. The Author has not forgotten what it is like to be child. She writes so well about her observations and understandings as a child while practicing the art of behaving as adults expect. Parts are funny. Her medical history is appalling and arouses enormous sympathy. Although she takes some responsibility on herself for the lack of diagnosis she really shouldn't. However, if she hadn't suffered so much we may not have had the wonderful author of to day but have been admiring from afar a very able barrister! Many more lives are touched as a result of her shaming medical treatment.

yes, because it is well written and something big kept happening and I seemed to miss quite how we got there.

What did you like best about this story?

The way it was written

Have you listened to any of Jane Wymark’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No. But I liked Jane's voice; she could have been Hilary reading her own work. Just a couple of places where I felt she missed the emotion or irony behind the text.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

N/A

Any additional comments?

This autobiography was well written, as one would expect from Hilary Mantel. She tells a detailed account of moving to her new home, whilst recalling her life story. She spends a long time writing of herself as a small child but her adult life leaves many unanswered questions with her writers hook of tantalising you with the information she chooses to hold back. It seems bad health has dogged her life and formed and shaped her choices. I thought her brave in recalling her experience in a mental institution. A good book, which I very much enjoyed listening to.

What made the experience of listening to Giving Up the Ghost the most enjoyable?

The anecdotes from the life of Hilary Mantel that are then reflected upon by the author and placed into the context of her whole life. It is a complex book, but there is a simplicity about it that is very graceful.

What other book might you compare Giving Up the Ghost to and why?

Clearly, by my plagiarism of his title, C S Lewis' book, ' a Grief Observed'. Although Lewis is writing about the death of his wife, and his responses to it; and Mantel is writing about her never-born child, to me they are very synchronistic in their integrity and openness.

I did not think either wrote of raw pain, but rather of observed pain. They were able to experience and then describe an internal feeling.

Have you listened to any of Jane Wymark’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I have watched innumerable 'Midsomer Murders' though.

In this book, I found her voice sympathetic and expressive. It told the story without being in any way obtrusive to it.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I do not think this could be made into a film. It is too intimate and inward looking. The actual story of the author's life is not remarkable and would not really make for good watching.

What is remarkable is how Hilary Mantel focusses on her emotional responses to the events of her life - and that is something that can only be presented in words, not pictures.

Any additional comments?

The book is complex and rewarding. It is short and beautifully crafted.

I think it speaks to all of us, as each one of us has had a deep loss at sometime in our lives.

It is important to say that such a complex book will not satisfy in a single listening/reading. There is too much in it to take in. However given its brevity it is easy to listen to a 2nd and even a 3rd time with as much interest in it as was there the 1st time.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Robyn

Modbury, Australia

29/07/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"slow start, wonderful middle and end."

For the first part of this book I had two very strong opinions - I was impressed by how beautifully it is written, but even the best writer must have something interesting to say and I just wasn't grabbed by any of the anecdotes and incidents from Hilary's childhood. But by the time she started university I was captivated, and her experiences with the medical profession are heart-breaking and recounted with such honesty I was fascinated and felt very privileged to be witness to everything she had gone through. The middle and end made up for the beginning so, overall I'm very glad I stayed with it.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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